Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump yesterday (8 December) defended his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States, comparing his plan to the World War Two detainment of Japanese-Americans in an attempt to dismiss growing outrage from around the world.

On Monday (7 December), the billionaire conservative called for blocking Muslims, including would-be immigrants, students, tourists and other visitors, from entering the country following last week’s California shooting spree by two Muslims who authorities said were radicalized.

It was the most dramatic response by a presidential candidate following the San Bernardino, California, rampage, even as other Republicans have called for a suspension of President Barack Obama’s plan to allow in 10,000 refugees from Syria.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Trump’s proposal could thwart US efforts to connect with the Muslim community, and the Pentagon issued a similar warning. Secretary of State John Kerry said Trump’s ideas were not constructive.

A Trump campaign spokeswoman, asked for comment on US officials’ reactions, did not address their criticism.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Trump’s comments disqualify him from being president and said other Republican candidates should disavow him “right now”.

The prime ministers of France and the United Kingdom, Canada’s foreign minister, the United Nations and Muslims in Asian countries all denounced the real estate mogul’s comments.

But Trump said his ideas were no worse than those of then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who oversaw the internment of more than 110,000 people in US government camps after Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

“What I’m doing is no different than FDR,” Trump said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” program.

“We have no choice but to do this,” he said. “We have people that want to blow up our buildings, our cities. We have to figure out what’s going on.”

Trump said on ABC’s “World News Tonight” the ban would be “short term.” He said the ban could be lifted “very quickly if our country could get its act together.”

Trump’s stance could help Democrats

Trump leads the Republican pack seeking the White House in 2016, with 35% of support in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll. Nearly all of Trump’s rivals criticized his proposal on Monday.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told the Washington Examiner that the United States must combat terrorism “but not at the expense of our American values”.

The two top officials in the Republican-controlled Congress – House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell – criticized Trump, but said they would support their party’s eventual nominee.

But other Republicans warned that if Trump is the party’s choice for the November 2016 election, his stance could hurt in a matchup with Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

“All this helps is his buddy Hillary Clinton, for sure,” presidential hopeful and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush told reporters in Manchester, New Hampshire. “I don’t think Republicans are going to abide this language that guarantees that Hillary Clinton has a far better chance of winning.”

Democrats, meanwhile, blamed Republicans for Trump’s extreme language and warned it could help him with primary voters.

“Unfortunately, Trump is leaning into the kind of fear of progress that very well could help him win the nomination,” Huma Abedin, a top aide to Clinton, said in a fundraising email declaring her own Muslim faith.

Clinton said at a campaign event in New Hampshire that Trump’s Muslim ban was a “shameless and dangerous idea” which played right into the hands of extremists.

Polls have shown a stark divide between Republicans and Democrats in how they view Muslims, who number about 3 million in the United States, or less than 1% of the population.

Some conservative commentators, such as pundit Ann Coulter, came to Trump’s defense. Columnist Adriana Cohen wrote in the Boston Herald that Trump should go a step further and call for closing the US border entirely.

Trump on Tuesday tweeted a link to a poll showing that 68% of his supporters would vote for him if he left the Republican Party and ran as an independent.

Still, Thomson Reuters data showed sentiment on social media toward the outspoken billionaire became substantially more negative compared with that before his proposal on Monday afternoon to ban Muslims.

Trump’s campaign dismissed criticism that his plan would likely be unconstitutional for singling out people based on their religion. Spokeswoman Katrina Pierson told MSNBC that the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion, does not apply to people outside the United States.

International outrage

The reaction from abroad was largely one of outrage. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Twitter, “Mr Trump, like others, is feeding hatred and misinformation.”

A spokeswoman for British Prime Minister David Cameron called Trump’s comments “divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong.” A group started a petition to revoke Trump’s honorary degree from Robert Gordon University in Scotland.

“We have never been as far removed from what we’ve just heard in the United States,” Canadian Foreign Minister Stephane Dion said. The United States’ northern neighbor does not usually comment on elections in other countries.

A spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon rejected Trump’s comments, and Muslims in Pakistan and Indonesia denounced him.

Trump warned repeatedly that an attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001, could happen again if officials do not act first. He said that he did not know how long a ban would remain in place and that Muslim Americans would be allowed into the country after overseas trips.

Trump told MSNBC that people would be asked about their religion at US borders and that the ban would extend to Muslim leaders of other nations. He said he would not support internment camps.

Some observers poked fun at Trump.

The Democratic mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida, Rick Kriseman, said in a tongue-in-cheek tweet that he was barring Trump from visiting the city.

“I am hereby barring Donald Trump from entering St. Petersburg until we fully understand the dangerous threat posed by all Trumps,” Kriseman wrote.

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire who develops rockets and owns the Washington Post, suggested the GOP presidential candidate be sent to space.

The internment of the Japanese was nothing?
And what about the issue of whether Trump would even allow Moslem US citizens to return to America? In the ’30s, US states didn’t just round up illegal aliens, they rounded up Mexican-American citizens and trucked them deep into Mexico so they couldn’t return home.
That’s ethnic cleansing, the thing our country went to war with Serbia about.

Possibly, but it was a mistake for him to mention the internment of Japanese-Americans. He doesn’t even seem to know that Congress apologized for that and issued reparations. At the time Asians were viewed as genetically inferior and an alien threat, which is really why the Japanese-Americans were targeted but not German-Americans. Thus if we do that to Moslems now, we imply that they are genetically inferior and inherently evil – and history has proven that we were very wrong about Japanese people.

What Trump is suggesting makes no sense. In my opinion he does not understand the Muslim faith. it is as different as Christianity is. there are all sorts of denominations and they all have different beliefs.

What was interesting is Trump’s “exclusions” from his proposed ban, athletes and politicians. wonder if that permits the Saudi royal family into the U.S.A. along with their friends.

Trump has awakened the latent bigotry which has always been alive and well in the U.S.A. He has made it O.K. to be a bigot, in the views of many. It is sad. It is disgusting. It is scary. Trump first wanted to deport Mexicans and keep them from coming into the U.S.A. Now its Muslims. You wonder who will be next. Perhaps Jews, Russians. Where will it end?

If this man actually gets elected to the Presidency, we may see the American military ensure he never gets his hands on that little red button. it could be very “interesting”.

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